Scott Horton is the host of “The Scott Horton Show”, a foreign policy focused radio show from a libertarian point of view.  Scott has done over 2,500 interviews with experts on foreign policy, economics, history and politics since 2003.  They are all available in the archives on his website, scotthorton.org, for free.  I recently talked with Scott in Austin, Texas about U.S. history, foreign policy and libertarianism.

Q:  What is U.S. government foreign policy?

A:  Full spectrum dominance.  The United States government will be the global hegemon and the final arbiter in all disputes which concern them.  They will never allow any nation or group of nations to ever think about challenging their power.  To prolong the unipolar moment indefinitely, where there can never be another Soviet Union that could challenge them.  Peace through domination.

Q:  This doesn’t seem like it has anything to do with the ideas behind the founding of this country.  George Washington’s warnings about foreign relations in his farewell address come to mind.

A:  There are some foundational myths in this country.  The Second World War has in many ways replaced the Revolutionary War as the foundational event of this country.  Our enemies were pure evil, and any means were justified in defeating them.  We emerged from that war as the new British Empire.  We became what we once fought.  And it was justified because we were a force for good, unlike all the previous empires.  We were different.  The rest of the world had been burned to the ground in World War Two, and we were untouched, so we became the world’s factory.  We could afford to be an empire.

Q:  What about economic foundational myths?

A:  The Great Depression.  Every schoolchild learns that Herbert Hoover and laissez faire capitalism caused the Depression.  They tried total freedom and it just did not work.  It doesn’t matter that Hoover really intervened greatly in the economy, and that Roosevelt prolonged the Depression.  What matters is the image of starving people standing in a soup line, and Roosevelt and the New Deal saving the country.  That is much more powerful than the truth.  The message is that without the government, we’d all be in trouble.

Q:  Is war good for the economy?  World War Two, along with the New Deal, got us out of the Depression.

A:  That’s what they say, but it’s not true.  They take GDP from before the war, and compare it to GDP during the war, which is pumped up by military spending that is financed by debt and inflation.  There were shortages of consumer goods.  That GDP increase did not represent an increase in wealth for the citizens of the country.  Robert Higgs has documented this and showed that World War Two was a time of great sacrifice for Americans.  He then showed that it wasn’t until after the war, when the government slashed spending, that the Depression ended.  The destructive experimentation that the New Deal represented was mostly ended, the war ended, the soldiers came home, and the economy was able to grow.

Q:  Is there a connection between central banking and war?

A:  War is very expensive, and the government needs inflation to pay for it.  They can’t raise taxes too much, or the wars would quickly become unpopular.  They can borrow some money from other countries, but that also has its limits.  To really do what they want to do, they must resort to inflation, and central banking allows them to do this.  They just can’t tax and borrow enough.  Printing money is easy.  It’s an accounting trick.  They create debt on one computer screen and create money on another screen and use the money on the second screen to buy the debt on the first.  They can then pay for the war.  The negative consequences come later.  What we saw in the last decade was a false prosperity created by all this new money, especially in the housing market.  So during a time of supposedly great sacrifice, where trillions of dollars are being spent, wasted, on totally non-productive wars, Americans actually have their taxes lowered and feel like the economy is strong.  We even had rebate checks mailed to us.  And then the crash happens and we’re still feeling the effects.  This is all due to the central bank and its inflation.

Q:  How does foreign policy operate in a democracy?

A:  I was taught in school that in a democracy, the policies adopted are more or less what the people want, and there is wisdom in a democratic majority.  The fourth grade narrative is almost as simple as that everything that happens is inevitable.  Did the North really have to militarily invade the South and did 650,000 people really have to die?  Did the U.S. have to have a blind eye turned on Pearl Harbor in 1941 so it could get involved in a European land war?  Did they really have to drop atomic bombs on Japan?  These things are not questioned.  Democracy and majority rule absolves people of questioning what did happen and what may happen next.

Q:  What readings would you recommend to people who want to become more familiar with these issues?

A:  Anyone who wants to understand what’s going on with the U.S. empire should read Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback Trilogy.  Stephen Kinzer has written a lot on Iran policy.  On a more philosophical level, Chapter 14 of Murray Rothbard’s book “For a New Liberty” and his essay “War, Peace and the State” are great.  Read Justin Raimondo to learn about the neoconservatives and what they have done to U.S. foreign policy and what is going on today.

Q:  Are questions of foreign policy, wars, and empire left/right questions?

A:  Both sides are for war and empire and have the same foreign policy goals.  G. Edward Griffin showed me in his book “The Creature from Jekyll Island” that these questions don’t have to be viewed as left/right issues.  You can be a flag waving nationalist, as he is, and see that the world empire is the surest way to bankrupt and bring down America and so be totally anti-war.

Q:  You say you are a libertarian.  What does that mean and how does it affect your foreign policy views?

A:  It means I’m in favor of the non-aggression principle, which says it is never justified to initiate aggression.  I’m against all political relationships that involve coercion.  In foreign policy, I apply the principles of individual morality to governments, which seem to always be exempt from these rules.  The rules shouldn’t change just because the State is doing it.  The government wants to define you as part of a group, and to define which groups you should be against.  But groups are just collections of individuals, each with their own lives and goals, and the usual moral rules should apply.

Q:  Have you always had these views?

A:  I heard George Carlin’s “Jammin’ in New York” when I was about 15.  It begins with his criticism of the first Gulf War and ends with him pointing out the hypocrisies of Earth Day.  School and the media had always told me that I had to be Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.  George Carlin handed me a permission slip to not have to choose between them.  I had never heard of libertarianism at the time, but I knew I didn’t want to be on either of those sides.